[b][u]Outskirts of Kerovnia
GES transport crash site
Status: Nominal[/u][/b]

Fracture. In a matter of moments, the even sensation of motorized flight had given way to a chaos of pulsing lights, shuddering of yielding metal, dancing kaleidoscopic haloes of heat and a flotsam of sounds carried by the river of roaring wind. Through her thermosensitive faceted eyes, Zsresrinn saw the evenly orange-red form of their craft's pilot emerge into sight, then erupt into a blinding flash. The sight was bizarre and grotesque at once, large parts of the mangled body flaring up with unnatural heat even as its extremities began to cool in deathly patches. There was something mesmerizing in the sight of a body blasted by directed energy, but it was not that by now familiar, even trite, spectacle that occupied her thoughts. [i]Ambush[/i] sprang into her mind, more as instinct than an articulate word. [i]So much for the Gnosis Eaters' reputation.[/i] Sudden attacks and skirmishes were not outside the norm on Chalgheol. A dozen times the Carnazir and their allies had unexpectedly struck at columns and convoys she had been trudging along with, and a dozen times she had clung to her ground in jungles and ruined streets, hammering them down as they came. As for how many times the Leaguers had tried that, she had stopped counting long ago.

The Sect, however, and by extension this mission, were supposed to be different. How exactly, she had never been told in detail, though a single look at the sophisticated control systems in the cockpit, contrasted with her memories of battered and patched-up hardware among Zrovreni and Dolsilvec alike, spoke volumes. All the same, what she understood well enough was that the unknowns should only begin once they were on-site. A disruption now meant the Sect had either failed at the secrecy that was supposed to have always been its staple, or else that its vaunted neutrality was really just for show. Being caught in the middle of it, she did not like the idea of either.

No time to think about that now. Warnings flashed, and she felt the ground grow closer. Armour plates spreading about the circumference of her body, Zsresrinn folded in her limbs, gathering on herself like a living spherical cocoon.

Impact.

Jolted out from the wrecked cabin, she rolled across the forested ground, tearing down shrubs and flattening fungal growths as she went. Her armour followed her movements like a set of legs, shifting and adjusting to bear the brunt of the collisions, until she finally came to a stop against a massive, craggy old trunk. She cautiously probed about her innards with nervous tendrils. The evzredigor core within her was almost crystalline in its semi-material fragility, and as she felt around it a sudden fear of deepening any damage caused the by the impact made her hesitate. No need. Everything was in place, shielded by the many layers of flesh and chitin veined with its thin, cool roots. Only once she was satisfied of this did she scan her own body proper, pushing herself up onto her hindlegs as she did. Some muscular strains, some ruptured minor vessels. Nothing permanent-

[b]"- GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE -"[/b]

Just as well.

She felt the arcing energy shots cut through the sky before she heard them, distant currents of superheated air rippling and crashing against her feelers. Off in the distance, shapes were moving, closing in. Maybe humanoid; certainly too many. The questions of who they were or why they had staged the attack did not occur to her - [i]the enemy[/i], that was enough to know for the moment. Rearing herself up, Zsresrinn raised a pair of overlapping carapace plates beneath her eyes, exposing the flesh beneath. The grey mass twisted and rippled, shaping itself into an extruding rectangular barrel of fibrous, bark-like matter. [i]Inhale, track, fire.[/i] The spineblaster spat its sharp-tipped projectile with a wheezing pop, like a whale exhaling after a deep dive. It was unlikely to hit anything at that distance, but a warning shot to slow the assailants in their tracks was the best she could do now.

"If you can hear me, get into cover!"

Zsresrinn half-spun about, turning a set of eyes away from the treeline and back towards the wreckage of the aircraft. Her team - her fellow agents in this, at any rate - was already dispersing. She caught a glimpse of the Nova operative's massive heat signature heading off, followed by the muted, fading traces of one of the 'hangers. The one who had spoken, the power-armoured human, was digging in at the impact site. She snapped her mandibles. The broken hull was unlikely to survive a bombardment like the one that was being aimed at them.

"Move out," she half-rasped, half-chittered through a secondary vocalizer, carefully modulating her breath to match the alien vertebrate speech rhythm, "Unsafe here. Better regroup."

Without waiting for a response, she set off into the thick of the jungle, crawling over the undergrowth in long, measured steps. Comms were down, probably jammed; there was no telling where most of the group had ended up; the enemy heavily controlled the area; choosing any single direction to follow was a matter of blind luck as much as anything else...

But it was the best she had now, and it would have to do.